When September Ends
by Saffronica612
Summary: songfic--"Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day. I can't mourn all year long. I'm a Sky Knight, and I have duties. But for one month...


Author's Note: I've had this song stuck in my head for a long time, and this idea for a song-fic, but I just never got around to writing it. Well, now that I finally have a few extra minutes on my hands, I can write it down! Storm Hawks belong to Nerd Corps, and the wonderful band Green Day wrote "Wake Me Up When September Ends."

* * *

_Summer has come and passed_

_The innocent can never last_

_Wake me up when September ends_

I shall always be known as the loner. Yet I know that behind their backs, despite all I have accomplished, I am the one who failed.

I agree with them.

The difference between them and me was that they were able to go on. They were able to live their lives like nothing had happened, but I couldn't.

Fifteen years old. It's too young to see the four people whom you love the most, the four people who are your only family in the whole Atmos, brutally slaughtered before your eyes. While you can only sit there, frozen, watching the horror, praying for it to be a nightmare but knowing it isn't, knowing you're never going to wake up.

Because you don't wake up from real life.

But real life goes on, and so must you. There are innocents that need protecting.

But I'm cracking. It's showing, I'm not the perfect Sky Knight that everyone thinks I am. That's when I realized, they could try to forget, but it was pointless for me to.

So eleven months a year, I am Starling, rising star in the Sky Knight Ranks, lone protector of Terra Mesa, the one whom the Sky Knight council can always count on.

But September, the month when it all happened, that's when I go off on my own and cry.

Wake me up when September ends. Remind me of who I truly am, because I am not sure. Don't let me forget. Please.

_Here comes the rain again,_

_Falling from the stars._

_Drenched in my pain again._

_Becoming who we are._

I'm not sure where I am. Some Terra. The actual land where our base was is lost to me now, and I never wait under the flag memorial that the Mesian people set up. I would be too easy to find there, and besides, the squad and I never hung out on that piece of rock.

Every year, I look for our secret base, but our pilot, whose paranoia rivaled that of Stork of the Storm Hawks, insisted that we were blindfolded before she flew the ship over there. So I've never been back. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing.

I felt a drop of rain on my hand, so I looked up. The stars twinkled tantalizingly above me, clear as could be. Slowly, my hand shaking, I raised it to my cheeks.

They were wet.

I sank to the ground, sobbing. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't control myself. Reality began to blur, and I became lost in the waves of pain and the wracking sobs.

Starling, the failure.

_As my memory rests,_

_But never forgets what I lost._

_Wake me up when September ends._

One month. That is all I allow myself to mourn. Then there is work to be done, people to save, Cyclonians to fight.

One month. As soon as my time is up, I get back on my skimmer, and fly to my house. I run a shower, clean myself, sleep in my bed. The next morning, I report to the Sky Knight Council.

It's when I see people like you, that's when I remember who I am. You Storm Hawks, you smile, you laugh it off, you fight. You know who you remind me of?

Me. The Interceptors. Déjà vu.

And as much as I want to beg you to stop fighting and go home, I know I can't. We're at war, and if you left the front lines, innocents would die. Cyclonians would conquer us even faster.

But one day, one of you will die, and then what will you do? Will you become like me, unable to function, just able to do your job because everything else, everything that made you a person and not just a Sky Knight, has died along with your loved ones?

I hope you do not have to learn that lesson the hard way.

You asked me to join you, and I said no. That is still my answer. I'm not sure if you'll ever understand, but maybe it's better if you don't. Ignorance is bliss. If I could take back my childish naïveté, my optimism, my hope for the future, I would in a second.

But I can't, because I have four deaths weighing on my heart, my mind, my soul.

It's October, so I can't sit down and cry. I have work to do.

Yet I'll never forget the Interceptors. I'll never let the squadron die. As long as I live, our name shall live on.

Promise me you'll never let me forget who I am. Each year, each September, I find myself coming closer and closer to just joining them. Promise me you'll wake me up when September ends.

* * *

Yeah, I know it's depressing. Makes you wonder what's going on in my mind, right? I just love to write depressing stuff…lol…


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